Woman died after heart attack during surgery to reduce the size of her nose

A young woman died after having a heart attack during a routine nose reduction operation, an inquest heard yesterday.

Ambulance staff called to treat Kat McClure were made to wait for about an hour by doctors at a private hospital before they were allowed to take her to accident and emergency, it was alleged.

The £5,800 operation to reduce the size of Mrs McClure’s nose and give her a chin implant was supposed to be a simple hour-long procedure.

The inquest heard how anaesthetist Dr Ahmed el Sayed Moustafa (left) failed to keep full records of his treatment as he frantically tried to re-start the heart of Kat McLure, pictured (right) with husband David

But during surgery her blood pressure plummeted, she suffered a
cardiac arrest and the concerned ward matron called 999.

A paramedic told the inquest that ambulance staff had to wait while
surgery was completed on Mrs McClure at the Belvedere Hospital in Abbey
Wood, South-East London, but anaesthetist Dr Ahmed Moustafa said he had
been trying to resuscitate her.

Mrs McClure, 31, a sales executive, went into a coma. She died six
months later.

Dr Moustafa, now 73, was not barred from practising after the
operation in 2005. The next year he was suspended from the private
Highgate Hospital, North London, when England footballer John Terry’s
mother Sue had a heart attack on the operating table. She later
recovered.

Mrs McClure, originally from Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, was
living in Spain at the time of the operation. She married her husband
David in Ibiza in 2002 after winning the wedding on TV show, Passport to
the Sun.

The court heard that Mrs McClure was deeply unhappy with her facial
appearance, and also wanted an uplift operation on her breasts, which
were size 34C. Her husband, who was not in court, said in a statement
that his wife ‘loved life’ and ‘would not take any risks that would
possibly harm her’. Before surgery on November 22, 2005, her medical
team were told she suffered from a condition which made her prone to
blood clots.

Dr Moustafa told the inquest at Southwark Coroner’s Court that he was
aware from talking to Mrs McClure that she suffered from the condition,
known as anti-thrombin III deficiency.

He said he was ‘trying to discourage her’ from having the operation.
Dr Moustafa said he administered heparin to thin the blood and prevent
any risk of clotting. He said the operation, performed by surgeon Dr
Edward Latimer-Sayer, was ‘very fast’. It took 20 minutes to operate on
the nose, ten minutes to operate on her chin and around 15 minutes to
bandage the nose.

Asked by coroner Dr Adele Williams where his notes of Mrs McClure’s
vital signs were – including her pulse and electrocardiogram – Dr
Moustafa said he relied on the computer to print out the readings after
every operation.

He said: ‘There’s no print out. I did not take any records. I’m a
very slow writer.’

Commenting on one note Dr Moustafa did make, Dr Williams said: ‘I’m
surprised. I’ve never seen an anaesthetic record that does not include a
record of what the pulse was. I find it very troubling indeed.’ At this
point Mrs McClure’s father Fred Laughton, 66, sobbed uncontrollably in
court.

Mrs McClure suffered severe bleeding and a heart attack around 2pm.
Dr Moustafa said he tried to resuscitate her for ten minutes before an
ambulance crew took her away.

But paramedic Julie Carpenter told the inquest that Dr Moustafa and
Dr Latimer-Sayer kept ambulance staff waiting for up to an hour while
they finished the surgery. ‘We had been on the scene so long it was
life-threatening,’ she said.

A crew arrived at the hospital at 2.14pm – and were only allowed to
take Mrs McClure to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich at 3.15pm.